


memories

by miss_belivet



Series: the wonder poison archive [2]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 17:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11406993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_belivet/pseuds/miss_belivet
Summary: I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way.





	memories

**Author's Note:**

> _Memories, memories_   
>  _Dreams of love so true_   
>  _O'er the sea of memory_   
>  _I'm drifting back to you..._
> 
> _You left me alone_   
>  _But still you're my own_   
>  _in my beautiful memories._
> 
> _Memories_ , Kahn & Van Alstyne, 1915  
> 

The melody follows Isabel down the sidewalk, through the cafe, and into the automobile that is waiting to take her to this month's base of operations. Long, low notes drift through the air; she removes her hat as if to brush them away from her head like a stray bit of lint before she realizes how futile such an effort would be.

The perfume lingering in the collar of her coat amplifies the sensation of something slipping through her fingers. She leaves it on when she arrives at the laboratory, claiming the day for researching and reviewing what their spies have collected from Allied scientists. It is a Sunday, and the factory surrounding her is silent save for a pair of guards murmuring quietly beside the door across the warehouse.

She allows her head to fall back.

She only lets herself ruminate on Sundays. Her hand curls a pen about aimlessly in the corner of her notebook, a Christmas present from several years ago that she has not yet filled. It's green leather, edged in brass and embellished with a Celtic cross, and must have cost at least three weeks' savings. If she turns to the binding in the back and pulls on a little ribbon, a panel will swing outward to reveal a photograph on the other side.

_Shadows of days that are gone..._

The pen stops moving as the song begins again in her mind, and Isabel lays it gently on the table. A moment later, she is examining the photograph, committing every detail to memory as if she hasn't done this every Sunday since.

Since.

The curve of her lips. The stray wisp of hair that the photographer must have tried to fix for her; _no, no, my spouse loves it like that, leave it, please_. The forget-me-nots around her collar are reduced to gray, but Isabel remembers selecting the cornflower blue thread with the precision only a chemist could possess. _I couldn't afford the silk thread, but my stitches are even, aren't they_... 

For once, her bitterness is not foremost in her mind. She picks up the pen again, pushes aside a file, and writes in the margins.

_But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you any longer: I still love you too much for that. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fatal art. But you still break down my defenses. And I resent it._

_I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way._

_They did not deserve you._

_What have I done?_

Then she remembers, and feels foolish, and the page fills with another sentiment entirely.

xXx

Two months later, the journal goes missing when she turns her back to conduct a test for Ludendorff.

She cannot see his face, she does not know who he is, but she knows even before he shoots at her from the sky and destroys her laboratory that she will kill him.

When she arrives at her stark apartment in the early hours of the morning, she curls her body around the small, incongruent throw pillow on her stiff bed. The lace is unraveling and turning yellow, and she hasn't quite managed to make it look more like a pillow than the shift it used to be, but the little frame tucked into the back closure calms the swirling, confusing emotion in her chest while she composes another letter.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by BlueJay_SilverTongue's interpretation of my character Johanna and the content of Isabel's notebook in their lovely fic, Hatred.
> 
> The note Isabel writes is fairly famous: it's a slightly edited letter sent to Virginia Woolf by Vita Sackville-West.
> 
> Also, I recommend the Al Johson recording of Memories, if you wish to listen to it!


End file.
